Condoleezza Hits U.S. “Birth Defect”

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3772

By Nicholas Kralev

Secretary of State http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=126 said yesterday that the United States still has trouble dealing with race because of a national “birth defect” that denied black Americans the opportunities given to whites at the country’s very founding.

“Black Americans were a founding population,” http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2027 said. “Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding.”

As a result, Miss Rice told editors and reporters at The Washington Times, “descendants of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3888, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that.”

“That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today,” she said.

Race has become an issue in this year’s presidential campaign, which prompted a much-discussed speech last week by Sen. Barack Obama, one of the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination.Miss Rice declined to comment on the campaign, saying only that it was “important” that Mr. Obama “gave it for a whole host of reasons.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080328/FOREIGN/746301768/1001_

2008-03-28